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Be warned, Alpha Protocol is very much a love-it or hate-it game. This forum really loves it, but judging by its review scores most people don't. Funnily enough, while I'd say it's overall the best game on my list, it's also the one that caused me the most ire.

I liked it. I even liked the "omg I'm being sexually harassed by a KGB vixen whose boobs can crush my head" bit. I liked the "three JBs" motif. But BESTEST GAME EVARRR is a high bar.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

I liked it. I even liked the "omg I'm being sexually harassed by a KGB vixen whose boobs can crush my head" bit. I liked the "three JBs" motif. But BESTEST GAME EVARRR is a high bar.

Same here. I had two Obsidian games one the list but AP was not one for a reason. The extreme focus on a limited group of NPCs was done well, the combat, the timed dialog, Thorton's lines, the bosses, and occasionally the levels were not. All in all, I think it was a poor execution of a really good idea.

Alpha Protocol tends to get rather low review scores because its implementation was a bit on the shakey side. The gunplay wasn't very good, the interface was irritating at times, a lot of the voicework was laughable and balance wasn't even attempted. But that doesn't matter to me, none of those are even close to game breaking, and what Alpha Protocol did well was something no other game has done and is so important. Choice. Meaningful choice. You don't just get light side or dark side points, your choices drastically affect character relationships and even the game's narrative and structure. Who likes you? Who hates you? Which mission area did you do first? How stealthy or murderous were you? All of these things make serious changes and I loved that. I'm sick of all the games in which you're either saint or Satan, the only difference in practice being that people will either worship the ground you walk on or call you an asshole.

So yeah, if you're prepared to overlook some flawed gameplay (not bad, just flawed), you can find a real gem in Alpha Protocol.

My issue with Alpha Protocal was that it may have given you meaningful choice, but it was amongst generic computer game characters and concerning a third rate Tom Clancy plot. These branching choices became irrelevant when I didn't give two shits about what was going on. I was also expecting gameplay more inline with Deus Ex, but got a corridor shooter with infuriating boss fights.

I am constantly confused by the comparisons by Bloodline, which felt like a game that needed another years work, but knew exactly what it was trying to do. The final third might be a complete mess, but the first 2/3rds are wonderful, if a bit buggy. Alpha Protocol just felt broken and unconvinced by what it could be for all that I played of it.

Now, I only manged to play, at most, half of it, so maybe things become more interesting later on. I just don't see that being the case from how uninteresting both the gameplay at story was for that first half.

That last one was a switch from Team Fortress 2. I like TF2 a lot and it is probably the game I have put the most hours into. However, I also feel like it is a rather shallow game that I have only ever dipped in and of. NS2 is the far more ambitious multiplayer game and rewards you so much more. I hope to be playing it for many years to come.

Edit: @Gorzan - Farenheit did that first and was far more interesting with it.

Edit: @Gorzan - Farenheit did that first and was far more interesting with it.

Ooh I'm glad Fahrenheit was 2005 or else it would maybe have been an omission from my list.

I think those games are more or less on par. Both had horribly annoying boss fights, Alpha Protocol started weakly and gradually came together whereas Fahrenheit started strongly and went off the rails. Alpha Protocol was unintentionally (or was it intentional?) funny because the protagonist was a caricatured dick, Fahrenheit was (almost certainly) unintentionally funny because it went off the rails plot wise in the final quarter. Despite its flaws the gameplay in Alpha Protocol is stronger and despite its descent into (abliet hilarious) madness the plot of Fahrenheit was far more intriguing and the characters much more sympathetic.

As for the timed conversations (which were what you guys were referring to after all) I'd actually lean towards AP doing them better as there were a few less instances of the character saying something unexpected and the actual consequences in terms of your relationship with the characters felt more meaningful in AP even if they were, much to my disappointment, telegraphed with "friends +1". The choices in Fahrenheit didn't seem to matter as much, as while it was interesting to see the varying effects many of them lead to dead ends, a la choose your own adventure books. This wasn't the case with the more tightly crafted AP. Just my two cents though, they're both thoroughly enjoyable games in my book.

Wonder what people's lists would have looked like if we had a No Multiplatform rule. Mine would have two games left on it.

Mine would go down to 4 (5 if you count the free version of Spelunky, which is the one that I played). If you count Spelunky 4 of those 5 (Spelunky, Audiosurf, Spacechem, Crusader Kings 2) are the game which I've poured most hours into (the others being games just outside my list such as Puzzle Quest, Peggle, Dragon Age: Origins, Binding of Isaac).

If asked to create a top 10 PC games list, I don't see anything wrong in naming 10 brilliant games with the dual motive of providing 10 reasons to get a PC. That doesn't necessarily exclude multi-platform stuff - Skyrim and Blood Bowl are a must for the PC. You'd never see something like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress birthed on a console though. A market entirely controlled by a single company requires a different mindset.